The Missing Ingredient in Networking Marketing, Part 2

by Al Hanzal

Training Your Sales Force

Let’s breakdown this missing ingredient--the ability to teach your network partners who you want to serve with your business and how you want those networking partners to connect you with their referrals. We start by moving beyond the traditional model of selling.

To bring home this point, let’s pretend that you have been made sales manager for your company. They hired five new sales people. As sales manager, you must train these five people into a powerful sales force. Where do you start?

If you use the traditional model of sales training, you start by teaching your sales force about your company, its history. Then you will teach the features and the benefits of your products. You have a laundry list of features that make your product superior to others products on the market. Your pricing is one of your product features.

As part of the sales training, you will high light the various objections your sales force will receive about the product. As part of their training you will equip them with a response to every objection. You will teach them how to make cold calls and play the numbers games of making X number of calls to get X number of appointments to get X number of sales.

You will quickly find this traditional sales model does not produce the sales you want. In today’s crowded market place where customers have so many buying options, product selling produces fewer and fewer results. The traditional selling model focuses on the company, the company’s product, and the features, in particular the price of the product.

More successful businesses have shifted to a customer focus model. Customer focus selling starts with the customer, their problems, their issues, their desires. The role of the sales person is to become a resource finding company solutions to a customer’s issues. The focus shifts from selling the company’s products to focusing on the customer and finding solutions to their issues. And giving them a great buying experience in the process.

How do you apply this to improving your network marketing? You can use the customer focus selling model to teach your network partners the ability to teach your network partners who you want to serve with your business and how you want those networking partners to connect you with their referrals. There are five ingredients to mastering this skill.

The Missing Ingredient in Networking Marketing, Part 1

by: Al Hanzal

When clients come to me asking how to improve their networking marketing efforts, I start by asking them, “What have you been doing with network marketing?”

They will often tell me, “I seem to be doing the right things with my networking marketing. But it is not producing the quantity and the type of referrals I want.

“I prepare my weekly commercials before I come to the meeting. My attendance at meetings is good.”

“I seem to have lots of credibility with the other members of my group. They like me. I take time to get to know the other members both personally and professionally.”

“I give others in the group referrals because I believe in the giver’s gain mentality.”

“I take on extra responsibilities for the group and often help with various organizational tasks that need to be done.”

“A few of the people in the group used my products and services. They give me glowing testimonials about my business. But these have not stimulated additional referrals from the group.”

“When I do get referrals from others in the group, they are very cold leads. I follow up on the names I receive but they feel just like a cold call.”

“What am I doing wrong? How can I make my network marketing more effective?”

The Missing Ingredient

The qualities they talk about, credibility, a giver’s gain mentality, preparation, extra participation in the group are important qualities for networking success. There is one more quality, the missing ingredient to powerful networking success--the ability to teach your network partners who you want to serve with your business and how you want those networking partners to connect you with their referrals.

You can call this missing ingredient “teaching” or you can call it “training” your sales force. Here’s the beauty of this missing ingredient. Because it is a skill, it is something you can learn and master. It is something within your control. When you employ this skill in your business, it will accomplish all of the results promised by network marketing. You will get more customers, better customers, and more loyal customers. You will get customers at a fraction of the cost of other marketing and advertising efforts.

How I Taught My Aged Aunt Search Engine Optimization

by: Phill Turner

“What does SEO stand for?” asked my 62 year old aunt one day. I was in the middle of organising my next Webinar so I was a bit busy at the time. “That stands for search engine optimization” I said still preoccupied with the job in hand. “Mmm” I heard and then silence. “It’s no good” I thought, “I’ll have to stop what I’m doing and explain”. I turned to her and said “A search engine is..” She jumped in saying “I know what a search engine is! I know I hate computers but I’m not a total computer phobe! I just don’t see the need to surf the web, as it’s called, all day long”. “Ok, ok, I’m sorry. What do you want to know for anyway?” “It was in an article I was reading and you know I like to keep up with things. Can’t you just explain in simple terms?” Oh dear. Bang goes my early night!

#1 INTERNET TRAFFIC

“Internet marketers want to get traffic, visitors, to their websites so they can sell their products. People who want to buy things go on somewhere like Google and put a word or two in the box to look for sites with their particular ‘want’ on. There are millions and millions of marketers out there, so there needs to be a way of rating the best and the worst. Traffic plays an important part but it is not the only factor in the rating conundrum. My aunt thought about this and said “So how do they get to the top of the search engine?”

#2 KEYWORDS

As you can imagine there are certain words that people use when their searching. Washing machine, television, help, cure. Depending on the product being sold there are lists of what they call keywords which are the most often used. So if you use these words in your advertising and articles on your site they will attract the search to you. You can go on Google and search the words in your title to find a good combination.”

My aunt was impressed “Clever! So all they have to do is to include the right keywords and they’ll get all the traffic they want? They called it search engine optimization just to complicate things.” Here we go! “It’s not quite as simple as that. There are other factors involved.” “Which are?” she said. “I’ll go through them.”

#3 CATEGORIES AND TAGS

“There are also categories and tags. A bit like a filing system, you go to the category, then the tag and finally the keyword. That’s why it’s called search engine optimization; the shortest route to what you want. As a marketer I want my route to be shortest.” “Any more things I should know?”

#4 LINKS

“Yes. If you put links into everything you do, which take anyone whose reading anything you do back to your website, then you get more traffic, or clicks, and that adds to your rating with the search engines.” I wasn’t sure my aunt understood this totally. “Links?” “Yes. You know the web address http//www. etc., that’s what a link is.” “Oh, I see. That must all take a lot of time and effort. How on earth do you manage it?”

#5 SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION SOFTWARE

“You can get a software package to help. There a lots on the market, I use SEOpressor myself. I write articles and things in a system called WordPress. As I write them it tells me if I have enough keywords, links, headings etc. as I go so that I can get the maximum search engine optimization with the article.” I showed my aunt a post that I was writing and the results changing as I wrote. “That makes things a bit easier, doesn’t it? So let me just rewind and see if I’ve got it”

#6 SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

“So this is how it goes….

• Traffic needed
• Keywords needed for recognition
• Categories and tags needed to be in the right file
• Links needed for clicks back to your site
• Software needed to make life a bit easier

Is that correct? Can I have a go?” And she did! Amazing!

5 Things to Consider when Planning a Coaching Session

• Don't underestimate the value of simply listening to the member's story.
• A good starting point is that of interested curiosity. Too much investment in an outcome may decrease the value.
• Set realistic, achievable goals.
  
• Meet for no more than 15-20 minutes. If you need more time, schedule another coaching session.
  
• Present a clear, concise image of your business (write down some key points before your meeting).
  

What Makes a Successful TEAM Member

by Cory Newman

Coaching Sessions - You should do a “Coaching Session” with every member of your chapter. If you have, then do it again! Businesses change, families change, our focus changes. Successful referral partners know, understand and like one another. This can only be achieved by meeting outside of the structured meeting.

Taking Your TEAM Membership to the Next Level

by Rayleen Kerr

One of the best ways to take your TEAM membership to the next level is through “Coaching Sessions”. Unfortunately, I think Coaching Sessions are one of the most "'underutilized" tools available to TEAM members to help them market their businesses within TEAM!

How do you do Coaching Sessions?

1. Create a Coaching Sessions Target list. I always recommend you start with your “Power Partners” first and go on from there. You should be consistently meeting with members regularly. By the time you have had a coaching session with every member in your chapter it will be time to do another one because your goals are constantly changing!
2. Meet one–on-one for coffee, lunch, or dinner outside of your TEAM meeting. If phone calls are easier for you, great! They can be literally 15 to 20 minute phone calls. Skyping is even an option, whatever works best for you and your calendar. Once you have mastered doing Coaching Sessions in your chapter I would even recommend utilizing them with clients, Power Partners and other business professionals outside of your TEAM Chapter.
3. Set goals on how many Coaching Sessions you would like to do in a certain time frame. Start small if you need to and build from there. If it’s one to two in a week - great, whatever you think you can handle.
4. Set goals within the Coaching Sessions themselves. Share with your Coaching Session partners what goals you have set for your business and how they can help you to reach them. If a clear picture is presented on how you can help each other, the results should be more referrals for one another!

Why do you do Coaching Sessions?

1. Coaching Sessions is an opportunity to have one-on-one time with a member of your chapter. This is important because you now have their undivided attention. Remember during your chapter meeting if you are in a group of twenty then their attention gets divided up between those twenty people and also that is not really the opportunity to brainstorm one-on-one on how you can help each other reach your goals. Having your Coaching Session partners undivided attention will definitely help when talking about your business and hearing about theirs!

2. Educating the members of your chapter outside of your weekly TEAM meeting will help you to get to know them and their goals even quicker. The more time you put in to strengthening your relationships with them will typically yields better results. Remember they are your sales force, it’s up to you how educated about your business they are!

3. Networking on a regular basis or between your weekly meetings does not come easily for most, the task is easy but getting out of your comfort zone is not. Coaching Sessions are a great way to teach you that you should be thinking about your TEAM Members and how you can generate referrals for them all week long not just at the your weekly meeting!

The Results?

The Results from doing Coaching Sessions regularly are simple, the Information that we need to refer each other business is current and fresh in our minds. It also results in better stronger relationships in less time! The results, more referrals!!

Getting to Know Your Networking Partners

by Kelli Holmes

Once you have begun your journey of doing better, smarter business with Relationship Marketing, there will come a time when you need to take those relationships to the next level. You have worked on building relationships with your “Power Partners” and other members in your networking group and with the professionals in your local chamber of commerce, perhaps also a community service organization or in your own personal/social sphere. But do you really know them? Better question, do they really know you?

Getting together for a meeting once a week or once a month is good, but what would happen with your relationships if you invested the time to meet with your networking partners outside of the normal networking meeting, business mixer, committee or board meeting? At TEAM Referral Network we call these meetings “Coaching Sessions”.

“Coaching Sessions”

For your networking partners to refer business to you, they must first get to know who you are and what you have to offer. Meet for lunch or coffee with a different member of your group(s) each week. At this meeting, use the time so you can each share information about one another. Getting to know your networking partners will help you give more referrals and receive more and better referrals.

Here is a guideline to use when you get together:

• Share information about who your clients are, where they live, work, etc.
• Share with each other your background, education and any recognition/awards you’ve received.
• Tell each other about your family life, hobbies and interests.
• Talk about other organizations you participate in.
• Exchange literature and/or selling tools.
• Schedule a visit each others place of business.

Take the opportunity to make these “Coaching Sessions” part of your marketing plans for the next year. The investment of time will pay off in growth for your business!